She filled him in, from the ransacked apartment in Nice and the chase by the police to the flight into Cairo and her kidnapping at the bazaar. She described how she’d escaped from the men who’d grabbed her and how she’d gotten back just in time to see Gabriel bundled first into a limousine and then into a private plane. She told him how she’d found out where the plane was headed. She didn’t tell him how it had ended, with her facing the man in the control room at gunpoint and realizing there was nothing to tie him up with and no way she could trust him not to sound the alarm. She’d thought one shooting in a day, and that in self-defense, was her limit. She’d learned she was wrong.
Michael asked many questions, forcing her to double back and retell parts of the story. He probed for details she’d forgotten or never known. But finally his questions petered out, like a wind-up toy running down.
“And you haven’t heard from Gabriel since you saw him board the plane,” Michael said.
“No. Have you?”
“I’m afraid not. I tried tracking his phone—nothing. The signal’s dead.”
“Maybe he has it turned off?” Sammi said.
“Not this signal,” Michael said. “It can’t be turned off.”
“Don’t worry,” Sammi said. “I’ll find him. I’ll find them both.” But she heard the empty bravado in her own voice.
“Marrakesh is a big place,” Michael said.
It was true—Marrakesh was large, and she’d never been there before.
“Do you maybe know anyone there who could help?” she said.
He hesitated before replying and even then seemed to be letting the words out only reluctantly. “There is . . . one man. I wish we had someone more reliable, but . . .”
“Anyone is better than no one.”
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “This man . . . he did save my brother’s life once—he hid him in his cellar for nine days when the Royal Gendarmerie were after him. And he knows the country like a native. He is a native.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He’s . . . Actually I don’t know what I’d call him. He’s a criminal, or at least he has connections to the underworld there.”
“That sounds perfect,” Sammi said. “The men we are trying to find are criminals too.”
“His ethics leave much to be desired. He only helped us because we paid him handsomely. If someone else had offered him more . . .”
“Well, then, don’t let anyone offer more,” Sammi said. “You’ve got enough money, don’t you?”
“Of course—the money’s not important,” Michael said. “If I knew for sure money was the only thing Reza cared about, we’d be fine. We can outbid pretty much anyone out there and he knows it. What worries me is that . . .”
“What?”
“Money’s not the only thing a man like that values, Miss Ficatier. There’s pride, there’s fame, there’s stature, power; there are sensual pleasures. Reza Arif is unpredictable, and that makes him dangerous. But he’s the only person we’ve got in Marrakesh.”
“Then I think,” Sammi said, “he’s our man.”
Michael sent an e-mail to the last address he had on file for Arif. To his surprise, he received a reply within a half hour. Arif supplied a telephone number and asked that Michael call him on a landline.
“Michael Hunt! As I live and breathe!” Arif bellowed jovially. “How many years has it been?”
“How are you, Reza?”
“Happy, wealthy, and in good health. And you, sir?”
“Not so well, Reza. I’m concerned about Gabriel. And Lucy. Our sister.”
“Oh? What is the matter?”
Michael briefly recounted the situation for him.
“Michael, you are asking an awful lot,” Arif said, his voice suddenly cagey.
“Are you saying you can’t help?”
“No . . . not ‘can’t.’ But—the Alliance of the Pharaohs . . . this is not a minor organization. Nor is it a government operative who, even when corrupt, plays by his own corrupt rules. These are killers, Michael, plain and simple. No, strike that—they are neither plain nor simple. These are killers who relish what they do and revel in making it as painful as they possibly can.”
“What are you saying, Reza?”
“Merely that I would need to be well incented before I would consider tangling with them.”
“You will be,” Michael said.
“Let us discuss,” Reza said, “just how well.”
Chapter 14
They put him in a bedroom on the top floor. After picking briefly at a plate of chicken, rice, and hummus—it might have been brought to him intact from Lucy’s room—Gabriel collapsed on the bed and lay without moving for several hours, not sleeping, just recovering. He replayed over and over in his mind the events in Khufu’s chamber and came no closer to understanding what had happened. It was the scepter—it had to be, unless that was just stagecraft and misdirection and somehow the electrical charge had been shot up through the floor. But no—his soles were rubber and Khufu’s were wood with metal trim; if there were any electricity running through the floor, the pharaoh would have gotten it worse than Gabriel.
So it must have been the scepter, concealing some sort of long-distance taser or stun gun—Gabriel did know of batons used by police in certain situations that delivered a similar charge. Hell, cattle prods did more or less the same thing, and could be used to subdue humans as well as animals. Not from a distance, true . . . but who could say that some sort of long-range wireless electroshock weapon hadn’t been developed? If one had, maybe the Alliance had gotten hold of a prototype in one of their heists . . .
Or maybe it was a stick that channeled the wrath of Egypt’s ancient gods. Whatever it was, Gabriel knew one thing: he wanted to stay clear of it in the future.
And that meant getting out of here now.
The digital clock on the dresser told him it was four thirty in the morning. His whole body was sore, but he forced himself to get up from the bed. He found he could walk, if somewhat stiffly; could move his arms, his fingers. He went through a routine of stretches and then took a shower, first as hot as he could stand and then as cold. When he got back into his clothes, he felt almost human.
He went to the window. Like Lucy’s, it was boarded up and fitted with bars outside the pane. Glancing through the cracks between the boards he could see that the sun hadn’t yet risen. Better yet, the shadowy sliver of wall he glimpsed across the way included copious bougainvillea—exactly the view he’d seen from Lucy’s window, just slightly higher up, which meant this room must be directly above hers.
He opened the window and began the process of loosening the boards, hammering each swiftly with his palm. When one hand tired, he switched to the other. It took several hard blows apiece to knock out the screws holding them in, blows Gabriel was sure could be heard throughout the building. But no one showed up at his door, so maybe the sound wasn’t carrying quite as much as he thought. One by one he pounded at the boards until they came free and plummeted the four stories to the street below. He could hear the distant cracks as the wood splintered.
Next, Gabriel tested the strength of the bars. These were fastened more snugly. He moved the desk till it was directly below the window, lay on his back with his heels against the bars, and began methodically kicking at them. He felt them budge, first just a bit, then a bit more. He redoubled his effort. One by one, they came loose. He stopped short of kicking them out, though—the noise of a steel bar landing on the pavement from four stories up would wake everyone for sure. Instead, he worked each bar the last few millimeters by hand, wrenching it out and carefully pulling it back inside. He laid the first three bars quietly on the desk, then stowed the last one in his inside jacket pocket.